How to Communicate Effectively While Outsourcing

How to Outsource Effectively

Many businesses now rely on outsourcing in order to function, benefiting from the fact that it provides them with expertise and experience at a lower cost than doing the same job in-house.

However, successful outsourcing requires more than just a highly productive vendor and cost-effective pricing. It requires great communication.

The whole purpose of outsourcing is to make your workload easier, but this will not happen if you are constantly dealing with questions, mistakes, and misunderstandings.

However, these things can largely be avoided if you take the time to learn how to communicate clearly with your vendor.

Good communication will also help them understand your business goals and expectations, making it easier for them to consistently meet them.

This short guide offers a few tips for effective communication with your vendor.

1. Establish communication channels

Whether you’re outsourcing in Philippines, India, or even just within your own country, the first thing you are going to need to do is establish official communication channels.

And by “establish,” we effectively mean “limit.” It’s going to be slow if vendors have to look for instructions, details, and documents in many different places, and things will inevitably get lost or overlooked.

The best practice when it comes to communication channels is to allocate each type of contact to a different channel.

This could be something like using email for sending documents, Slack for asking questions, and Zoom for video conferences.

2. Set your communication expectations

Besides the channels you use, you should also make clear how often you would like your vendor to report on your project, what information the report should contain, and what kind of format you want it sent in.

A common misunderstanding occurs when a client expects regular updates but hasn’t communicated this to the vendor, who keeps on working away at the project while waiting for the client to ask them how it’s going.

The result is often a stressed client and a confused vendor who feels like they’ve done nothing wrong. If you don’t want this to happen, you can follow these 6 Outsourcing Process & Steps To Free Up Your Time And Energy

Alternatively, ask your vendor to set up shared access on the cloud so that everyone can access important files and check project progress at any time.

3. Notify each other about holidays

This is especially important if you’re outsourcing to another country.

A few weeks before, and then a few days before, you and the vendor should notify each other of any national holidays or other occasions when you will be unreachable.

That way no one panics when they can’t get in touch, and important communications can be withheld until you are back at work so that neither has to go digging through a backlog of emails looking for them.

Read 13 Advantages & Disadvantages Of Outsourcing Software Development

4. Focus on video conferencing

If you’re outsourcing abroad, this tends to be the best way to make sure everybody understands what you want and they can ask questions to clarify things.

It can be helpful to have someone take detailed notes and email them afterwards too.

With this, you can outsource effectively and this can save you from dealing with a lot of questions and clarifications later.

Summary

Good communication with a vendor is all about setting expectations. There are 5 Business Process Outsourcing Examples you could learn from.

For the best results how to outsource effectively, be clear from the outset about communication channels, any regular communication that you expect, and times when communication is not possible.